Invasion of Manchuria

The Invasion of Manchuria occurred in late 1931 and early 1932 when the Imperial Japanese Army's 60,450-strong army in Manchuria, commanded by Shigeru Honjo, seized control of the Manchurian capital of Mukden and the surrounding areas without permission from the Japanese government. Honjo was inspired by Sadao Araki's Kodoha faction of Japanese politics, and he had a lieutenant plant dynamite on the South Manchuria Railway to sabotage the train tracks. Although the bomb did little damage, the Japanese blamed the attack on Chinese partisans and used the incident as a pretext to invade Manchuria. The Japanese negotiated with some Manchurian warlords to get them to defect to the Japanese side, and the Chinese lacked effective leadership, with their generals being motivated by personal interests. All resistance to Japanese rule had been crushed by February 1932, and Japan set up the puppet state of Manchukuo, led by deposed Chinese emperor Puyi and loyalists of the old Qing dynasty.